This is a relatively new area of the East Cheshire Quaker website where we will be featuring content relevant to our commitment to being an antiracist church. Please check back regularly for new content about racial justice.
Cheadle Hulme, Crewe and Nantwich, Disley, Frandley (Northwich), Macclesfield, Marple, Stockport, Wilmslow
This is a relatively new area of the East Cheshire Quaker website where we will be featuring content relevant to our commitment to being an antiracist church. Please check back regularly for new content about racial justice.
The ECAM Racial Justice Group are happy to announce a new workshop. This will be facilitated by Till Geiger. If you are interested, please contact either Véronique Pin-Fat or Ann Lewis. Also attached is the complete programme of workshops for 2024, including 'Unlearning racism' and 'White allyship'. We are supported by ECAM and can attend your Local Meeting at no cost to you. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any queries.
Quakers, Britain’s imperial past and reparations session
This workshop explores why Quakers are currently exploring our involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy. This exploration aims to provide the basis for an informed discussion of the issue of reparations before Britain Yearly Meeting.
I.Openings
II.Commitment to become an anti-racist church and a sustainable church.
III.Reflection Prompt
IV.Historical exploration
V.Implications for Quakers today
VI.Worship sharing: How might we think about reparation now?
The ECAM Racial Justice Group offer you a few quotations on racial justice that you may wish to contemplate, in order to explore what's involved in being anti-racist as a Quaker. Thank you to Ann Lewis for compiling them.
You are welcome to download the full collection.
"‘Our Quaker wish to believe in the fundamental goodness of each individual doesn’t help here. We can be as individually good as we like but unless we actively work to dismantle a system that maintains
white people in a global leadership role with a perceived right to extract wealth from countries that have already been made poor, we will continue to inadvertently act against our testimonies."
Helen Minnis, Swarthmore lecturer 2022.
Till Geiger will lead an exploration of the life of Bayard Rustin and what he may mean for us now.
By Leffler, Warren K., photographer; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:59, 25 November 2010 (UTC) - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID ppmsc.01272.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12143472
Invitation from Disley LM to all Friends in ECAM to join us in a Book Group to discuss on Zoom Helen Minnis’ 2022 Swarthmore Lecture ‘Perceiving the Temperature of the Water – Quakers speak about Racism’.
Dear Friends,
At Yearly Meeting 2022 we resolved to work towards becoming an anti-racist faith community – quite a challenge. This is just one contribution to helping us to think about how we can do that.
The group will run on 4 Wednesdays in 2024: Jan. 31st, Feb. 7th, 14th and 28th from 7:00-8.30pm on Zoom. We hope you will be able to commit to all 4 sessions but if you cannot, we would rather you came to some rather than none. The Zoom meeting ID is: 331 243 767.
‘Perceiving the Temperature of the Water – Quakers speak about Racism’ is a wonderful lecture. Click on the link so you can taste some of what the 2022 Yearly Meeting audience experienced in May 2022.
The expectation is that you will have also read the book which was published after the lecture. Copies are available from the Quaker Book Shop at Friends House for £10. Our experience is that it takes time for copies to be delivered so try to order as soon as possible.
Please let Ann Lewis know whether you would like to receive further detailed information about what we have planned in terms of format, etc by January 24th 2024.
We hope the group will be an opportunity to share all the ideas in Helen Minnis’ lecture.
In Friendship,
Ann Lewis, convenor.
On behalf of Karl Beswick, Bridget Dunbar, Paul Gee and Jan Vulliamy.
Disley Meeting are planning to read Helen Minnis’s Swarthmore lecture 2022 called ‘Perceiving the Temperature of the Water’ (cost £10). The idea is to host 4/6 sessions on a weeknight at the end of January through February 2024 on Zoom. Disley hope it will be open to all Friends in ECAM. Details to be sent to all clerks as soon as dates have been confirmed.
Friends can purchase the Swarthmore lecture from the Quaker bookshop here: https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/Perceiving-the-temperature-of-the-water_9781739226008
Helen Minnis' Swarthmore lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.
‘He never hid himself’: the incredible life of gay civil rights leader Bayard Rustin
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/21/bayard-rustin-movie-lgbt-civil-rights-netflix
ECAM's Racial Justice Group have developed a number of sessions that Local Meetings might wish us to come to deliver for them. Please see the attached document for full details. Please feel free to mail vpinfat@gmail.com if you have any queries about the sessions or wish to book us for a visit to your local meeting.